Comments on: Being Everything and Nothing All At Once

By: Monica

Monica — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:37:50 +0000

For me the crux of it is I wish we didn’t have to completely burden our families be they parents/ siblings/ partner/ children or these friends relegated to “family status”.

Perhaps if we lived in friendlier, tighter communities, where the entire neighbourhood shouldered the responsibility, we wouldn’t have so much angst about who would be there for us to look after us.

Anyway great post, and really had me thinking and discussing with my friends! And even wrote my own post about it:

http://kapookababy.com/2009/06/25/who-you-gonna-call-and-are-your-friends-on-that-list/

By: Who you gonna call? (And are your friends on that list?) « monica tan > kapookababy

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:10:31 +0000

[...] a question that is pertinent to Kylie who is living in a different country and a question this wonderful blogger put to her [...]

By: RocktheDebit

RocktheDebit — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:16:03 +0000

Yeah, but POA, etc. requires hiring an attorney, which is more expensive than, say, a standardized “legal siblinghood”, “mutual beneficiaries”, or PACS arrangement.

(Disclaimer: I’m in law school; I should be in favor of increasing the need for attorneys.)

By: Mel

Mel — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:52:51 +0000

@Rockthedebt You can give anyone power of attorney for money & health (at least here in Canada) but you do have to formalize it and make it legal. What I’m not clear on is if you have to explicitly state certain family members have no right to make such decisions or if the POA giving explicit rights to non-family is enough – and it may be different in the US.

By: Kathmandu

Kathmandu — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:30:12 +0000

I think I read that in France, they passed a civil-union-ish law several years ago. It was called something like ‘domestic partnership’, and it allowed for sharing of finances and insurance coverage and stuff.

It turned out that a lot of the people declaring domestic partnership were mother-daughter pairs. The law stops automatically allowing, say, a mother to include her daughter on her health-insurance policy, once the daughter reaches adulthood, so this was a way to arrange legal recognition of a continuing interdependent household.

By: Lyndsay

Lyndsay — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 03:50:39 +0000

It would be interesting to see you expand on the meaning of that quotation and how it applies to the family nowadays or applies to your family. Maybe I’m just tired but I feel like your entry wasn’t really about the quote.

When it comes to my mom’s family, I’m far closer to the women in my family. Through them, I’m closer to their husbands than the men who are my blood relatives. I’ve wondered why men seem less into family. I don’t know what consequences men being less into family might have.

By: kithkin

kithkin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:38:37 +0000

I realize this is not a very interesting comment, but I’m leaving it here as a marker to myself so I can leave more details Monday. The term before last, a legal scholar visited our class (her name is among the details I pledge to retrieve). Her studies focus on the status of “friend” in our society and really essentially I heard echoes of this through your post, PSoul. She also advocates for a legally recognized “friend” status for those whose closest relationships are not bound by blood. I do wish I could remember her name off the top of my head, but I’m out of town for the weekend. At any rate that should give you some source material.

By: Rosalind

Rosalind — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:42:07 +0000

I absolutely get what you’re saying. I have a sister who is no longer part of my life, and probably never will be. At the same time, I have two “friends” who go way beyond that – they are siblings to me. The word friend doesn’t do our relationship justice, especially considering my mother has very much become a second mother to them. I wish there was someway to formalize our relationship, legally. I think Hawaii has the right idea. There’s so much societal pressure that centers around the nuclear family – people are weirded out that I don’t talk to my sister. It’s like I’ve broken an unspoken rule or something. You make the family you want, I believe.

By: bluenose sailor

bluenose sailor — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:17:23 +0000

@ bluenose sailor: Just a note – I added in that time reference to show that the discussions took place a few years before the provincial courts and then the fed’l government recognized same-sex marriage, to help emphasize that these sort of discussions are really pro-active.

By: bluenose sailor

bluenose sailor — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:50:04 +0000

My thoughts are along the lines of Rachel_In_WY. Now, my mother was always a bit of a hippy before becoming a Baptist, so she’s not a perfect example, but I know that my conversations with her* about how the government should recognize legal “partnership” arrangements like this led to her being more open to the idea of civil/gay marriage. She came to acknowledge that the government administers the legal/taxation/inheritance/etc. aspects of marriage, but not the religious/spiritual/relational.

*I’m Canadian too, so these conversations took place 8-10 years ago.